What will your children be reading this summer?

I just read an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times by Claire Needell Hollander, a middle school teacher. Her article explains that while young, inexperienced readers should go ahead and read whatever they want during the summer, so long as they read, maturing readers of 10 years old and up will benefit more from selective reading. Ms. Hollander's preferred books build "verbal knowledge (an increase in word recognition) and world knowledge (an increase in understanding about the world around them)."


Ms. Hollander believes that middle- and high-schoolers should not self-select their summer reading. She believes that some students do well with the traditional recommended reading list (heavy on literary novels recognized as "classics"), but she prefers to narrow the students' selection by genre to ensure they are getting the literary diet that will enhance their academic health. Her top picks? High-quality but developmentally appropriate non-fiction. Most revolve on serious moral issues--child soldiers, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the like.


I believe Ms. Hollander when she says that studies have shown that students who read "high quality" material over the summer do better than those who completely self-select. My problem is that this is too short-sighted a goal. We don't just want successful students, we want to make life-long learners who will turn to books for information as well as pleasure. 


So, yeah, a kid who (her comparison) reads The Hunger Games might in the short term learn less words and information that the kid who reads The Red Badge of Courage. But if the kid who read The Hunger Games enjoyed it and develops a real pleasure in reading, they'll might read more as a 30 or 40 year old than the kid who read The Red Badge of Courage and gritted his teeth through the whole thing (not because it's a bad book, but because it was not to his taste). There was a wonderful post on the Nerdy Book Club recently by Sasha Reinhardt about how her low-brow love of The Babysitters' Club series helped develop her lifelong devotion to books. 



And while studies have supported (as mentioned in previous blog posts) that non-fiction appeals to many children who normally don't identify themselves as book-lovers, the serious tone of the books Ms Hollander lists will turn-off many children. The graphic novels Kampung Boy and American-Born Chinese may not appeal to her, but they certainly introduce serious subjects, geographic detail, and lots of new vocabulary in a format that might appeal to reluctant readers more than Francesco D’Adamo and Ann Leonori's Iqbal  or John Hersey's Hiroshima.

Need help with research, but can't reach primary resources?

My husband showed me a marvelous website today, both for teachers and for writers--the updated Library of Congress website. The benefits of this site are the following:

1) Large amounts of the LOC's collections are now digitized. That means, without actually visiting its site in DC, you can view rare materials like maps created by George Washington, newpapers from the time of the Civil War, and political cartoons from the Great Depression.
2) The award-winning interactive site offers the opportunity to virtually "visit" the current exhibitions at the LOC, play "Knowledge Quest," and make your own personal collection of favorite items.

As writers, we can benefit enormously from this resource. Setting a story in the past? We can find letters, diaries and journals of historical figures and be able to quote them in our work. Wondering what should be in the bedroom or office of your main character? You can see the books they read, find out from their diaries what their favorite foods were, places they visited, who they knew, see photos (from 1860s on) of how people dressed in those days, or paintings or woodcuts of where they lived. Need the characters to sound real? You can find out how people felt about historical events while they were still happening through personal correspondence, letters to the editor of newspapers, and political cartoons.

So little time, so many books to write...

I've been busy recently with editing projects, creating a new website (for family campers), and dealing with the general craziness in the Klempner family. That means that I haven't been doing my own writing very much in the last month. I sat down today to revise something I worked on a couple of weeks ago in my writers' critique group, and it felt divine. Ahhhh...

Another thing that kept me busy for the past month was an author visit. I read A Dozen Daisies for Raizy just in time for Shavuot & we did a great art project with the students (here are a couple more Raizy tie-in project suggestions...1&2). As usual, the kids wanted to know if there were any more books written about Raizy. I had to explain (again) that in fact I've written two sequels, one of which has never been published, the other of which was revised with a different central character and longer format, then published as a short story in Mishpacha Jr. 

I miss Raizy. But rejection letters have demoralized me. I haven't even tried to write a sequel for quite a while. I'm planning to write another novel this summer, but I think I'll also try my hand (again) at a follow-up to Raizy. 

I've already started brainstorming and scribbling away in my little notebook.

Summer reading

image from ClipArt ETC

I'm not a Pinterest fan, but here's a wonderful post by a fellow blogger at the Nerdy Book Club that gives super projects to make summer reading fun in your family. 

Summertime is the perfect time to develop a love of reading in your kids. Kids can select their own reading material based on their own interests rather than what their teachers think they should be reading. They can also read at their own pace without meeting a deadline. If your family (or your child's camp bunk) goes on an interesting outing, they can select books that dovetail nicely with the subject matter.



Many libraries have summer book clubs that your kids can join. Just go see the children's librarian for details at your neighborhood branch.